


you got me into this

by CopperCaravan



Series: Fallout Prompt Fills [6]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Codename: Tens, Developing Relationship, F/M, Graphic Description, Sorta kinda, Strangers to Lovers, are they best friends? are they lovers? who knows, not me and not either of them tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mac & Tens (f!sole) + "Do you ever think about... like... us?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	you got me into this

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly idk how this happened or what it is. Are they best friends forever? Are they in love? Are they friends with benefits? Do I have issues writing cut-and-dry relationships of any sort? The answer to all these questions is me running the fuck away.  
> Also, she loves Hancock. Just not at first. Just for the record.

Tens has a grin that could charm a deathclaw.

At the very least, she “charms” MacCready outta fifty caps up front. He should’ve known—right then—that she was trouble. And maybe he kinda did, but it was that damned grin, making him think she was at least the right kind of trouble, the kind that made a good time and a handful of caps.

Maybe it’ll turn out that he’s right, assuming they don’t get shot to hell in one of these warehouses.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says, toeing a nice pair of shoes on a dead guy, “I like Hancock and all, but you really think we oughtta be fucking with political shit?”

Tens drops to her knees and just takes the goddamn shoes, wipes the blood off with an old rag and shoves ‘em in the bag. “Daisy was lookin’ for some classy shit,” she explains. “Offered me a good price and never asks questions.” And then, after she’s wound the guy’s tie around her hand and packed it away too, she says “And anyway, fucking with political shit is about the only thing I know I’m good at. Ain’t got shit to do with Hancock. Personally, I’m not a fan.”

Mac stiffens and looks around, though there’s no reason to think any of Hancock’s heavy support is around—if they were, he wouldn’t have gotten dragged into this shit in the first place.

“How many more of these places we gotta hit?”

“Just two,” she says. Then she looks up at him like she’s just figured something out. “Unless—I mean you can head back to the hotel, if you want. I can finish up.”

Unsure whether he’s supposed to be touched or offended, he just snorts. “I can handle myself.”

“I noticed.”

And, well, if that brings him up a little short, she’s turned away to loot another body, so it’s not like she notices _everything._

.

So maybe she _does_ notice everything. Sure seems that way, especially when she stops them in the middle of the street and gives him a not-quite-gentle shove in the shoulder.

“What the hell’s up with you, MacCready?”

Two damned months and he still can’t best that grin—he’s not sure he can trust her, but he knows he likes her, and that’s a big deal all by itself. So he decides to suck it up and— _god_ —ask for help.

“You remember those assho—those guys? The ones shovin’ around the Rail when you first met me?”

“Hard to forget _that_ smell,” she says, and he laughs a little. It’s that kinda shi—stuff she does that makes her so easy to be around, even when she does drive him up the damn wall sometimes. Patience is a virtue and all, but not one either of them got.

“Well, if I tell you I used to work for ‘em, and if I tell you they ain’t real happy about me taking jobs around here, and if I tell you I could use some help... _dealing_ with that—”

“God _dammit,_ MacCready, just talk like a normal person, please.”

“I _am_ ,” he argues. He’s not, not exactly, but nobody with any sense asks an employer to help ‘em take out a Gunner encampment. Not that she’s all that good at actin’ like an employer—not like any of the ones he’s ever had, anyway. “I was gonna try and buy ‘em out, you know? That’s why I make you double count our caps.”

She smiles, too sweet, more like she’s about to sink her teeth into his throat than anything else. “And here I was thinking all that distrust was special, just because I’m _me_.”

He shoves her shoulder, not-quite-gently, and a split second later, when she grins and rolls her eyes, he thinks it might be a little more familiar of a gesture than he’s actually comfortable with.

“What I’m sayin’ is that even if I _could_ come up with the money, they could shoot me up and who the hell would know it?”

She actually fingers her gun—he _sees_ her do it. “I’d fucking know it.” For the hundredth time, he’s not sure how exactly he’s supposed to feel. She’s got a knack for throwing him off balance.

“So you gonna help me then?” He mentally flips for it—if it’s cap’s up, she’ll do it.

She shrugs, hand slipping off the butt of her gun. “Lead the way, partner.”

“I should tell you that shots are fifty, fifty. I mean, seriously, we could die.”

And again with that damned grin. “We won’t die.”

.

They didn’t die. That’s what he keeps telling himself. _She said we wouldn’t die. We didn’t. She said she’d help. She will._

She is. They’re here. Nothing between them and the thing that could save his kid’s life except a door. And a bunch of automated security. And a shitload of ferals.

Ferals with eyes long gone and the smell of death and radiation and rot stickin’ to ‘em better than their skin does. Nothing but atrophied muscle still strong enough to drag a woman down to the floor and rotten teeth still hard enough to rip a woman’s flesh from her bones. Nothing but the mindless fuckin’ drive to grab and tear and kill. They’re every bit the monsters they look like. And it doesn’t matter how itchy it makes him, he can’t ask her to turn around—not with Duncan waiting, dying, and the cure so close.

But goddamn if in that moment, he doesn’t look to the side and see Lucy, just for a second.

“Come on,” Tens says, bringing her gun to aim and ready to shoot off the lock.

“Wait.” She looks at him when he grabs her arm, waits for him to say something but there’s nothing, there’s just... nothing. It’s not optional. If this is what it takes to save his son, then this is what it takes, but _goddamn._

“You get you could die, right? You know that?” Because it ain’t about _we_ anymore. It is—somebody, one of them, has to get the cure to Daisy, to Duncan—but Mac’s always been ready and willing to die if that’s what it took. He wasn’t ready to watch Lucy die, to hear her screaming behind him while he fucking ran like a coward and a father both. He’s not ready to watch Tens die either, to see a bunch of fucking ferals be what takes her down and on his account after everything.

“You look like shit, Mac.”

He feels like shit. He feels like he’s gonna hurl on her shoes but he doesn’t—if for nothing else than to save himself gettin’ punched in the face or laughed at.

“Are you even listenin’ to me? This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a quick run for caps on some high as shit raider crew. You could seriously die.” _And I really don’t want you to die._

This time there’s no grin, just the hand that’s usually giving him a playful shove now resting on his shoulder. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“You couldn’t lie to an idiot,” he says, but all the humour’s gone right out of him. It’s so fuckin’ hot out here, he thinks he might actually faint. Of course, he’s still not real far off from puking on her shoes.

“I know,” she says, one side of her mouth turning up just a bit. “And I’m tellin’ you, Mac, we can do this. And nobody is gonna die. Well, except the ferals, but I mean...”

He bends over and just puts his hands on his knees, sweat and sick filling his head, and he laughs, even though they both know it’s not funny at all. “You had a moment going there,” he says, “and you just ruined it with your shitty jokes.”

She claps him on the back—with little sympathy for his nausea; he almost falls right over—and she’s grinning again when he stands back up. “I’ve got you, Mac,” she says. “And you got me, right?”

He takes a breath. “Right.”

.

It’s kinda hard for him to keep up, what with the pain shooting up his leg and the consequential blackouts but he does _try_.

“That’s not what the fuck I meant,” she yells at him, and then she shoves her pistol into that monster’s mouth and she _screams._

Something’s pulling him; he can feel himself dragging along the uneven ground and it _hurts._ He’s all but certain his lower half got left behind, and he can smell blood, can taste it, can feel it slick against his face and chest and _that doesn’t even make sense_ because it was his leg that thing tried to rip off and it _fucking hurts._ “I’ve got you, Mac,” she’s saying, and she’s so close, so breathless. _That’s her hand_ , he thinks, the blood on his face and his neck and his chest. _It’s her hand_. “It’s ok, Mac. It’s ok. I’ve got you.” And he thinks _I’ve got you too._

He can’t remember this one—she’s got so many goddamn settlements—but there are people, he knows that much. People who aren’t trying to kill them. People who are gasping and moving aside and coming forward and lifting him up and _it hurts goddammit._ He thinks he’s screaming. Maybe. Somebody is. When they drop him onto a couch or a table or a bed, he’s sure he does. Nothing looks quite right: all blurry and white ‘round the edges, but that’s Tens, in front of him. _Your hand,_ he thinks, but he can’t say it, sure as shit can’t move. She’s holding her pistol to someone’s head with her left hand— _your hand, boss; your hand—_ and he can’t make sense of the words; they’re blurry too.

This time, he’s awake. Really awake. She’s asleep though. Bent over in a chair next to his bed and her head on the mattress beside him. He looks around, breathes, measures the pain in his leg as _fuck_ but manageable, stops himself from scratching at a bandage around the bend of his arm. When he tries to say her name, he croaks like a damn frog and she doesn’t even hear him, so he lifts a shaky hand and cards his fingers through her hair ‘til he gets caught on a tangle and she jerks awake.

“Don’t ever fucking do that again, Mac.”

At first he wants to argue— _don’t try to_ save _you_ —but his leg hurts and she’d probably be all _pragmatic_ and shit, probably wag her finger and lecture him about close combat with sniper rifles and stuff that makes more sense than he cares to think about at the moment.

“How’s your hand?”

“About as fucked as your leg,” she says, holding up her right arm, ending in a bloody wad of bandages. He assumes she’s still _got_ her hand in there somewhere, but he’s also assuming he’s still got a leg. Sure hurts like he does.

He also notices a bandage around her elbow, connects it with his own. “You give me a blood transfusion?” He’s not _confused_ exactly, just... transfusions are tricky shit, especially out here.

“Weathers,” she says, standing up and kicking her chair away. “He was an ass about it too. Scoot over.”

This is exactly the sort of thing that would’ve freaked him the hell out before but—well, it just doesn’t anymore. For a while now, though he’s not real sure when things changed, exactly. He just makes room and when she finally manages to situate herself, he’s not shy about curling around her. And they just stay that way for a while, careful not to bump each other’s injuries, and actually a hell of a lot more comfortable than they’ve been in weeks, sleeping on the road.

“He take all our caps?” They’ve been hard up for a while, but with Salem having been more of a hit than a _hit,_ well...

“And then some,” she says. She _hates_ Weathers. Hell, Mac’s not real fond of him either.

“What’d he take?” He mentally prepares himself for her to say the weasel took half their ammo or even a couple of the guns. Seedy bastard _would_ pull something like that while they’re both bleedin’ out on the floor.

She must know what he’s thinking ‘cause she laughs. “Don’t worry; just an old ring. I knew the damn thing would come in handy.”

He’s never seen her wear any sort of jewellery. Moreso, if they’d found any good shit like that, she’d have told him—he figured out a while back that she don’t hold out on him like that.

“Mac, come on. A _ring._ I knew it’d be _handy._ Mac, this shit is gold.”

“Where’d you get a ring?”

Idea’s bumping around in the back of his head but he doesn’t wanna let it get traction. ‘Course the harder he tries to ignore it, the more present it becomes. The fact that she’s not laughing anymore just makes him more and more certain.

“Wedding ring,” she finally says.

She keeps that little soldier Lucy made him in the pocket of her pants. All things considered, that’s the safest place for it. Hell, sometimes, when she’s about to run right the fuck into the worst of things, she presses it into his hands and he’s equal parts grateful and terrified by what he knows she’s thinking. He’d rather bleed out in the dirt than pawn it off to anybody, a bastard like Weathers least of all.

He’s quiet a minute too long, apparently. She winces when she turns over, trying to move her right arm out of the way but settling on resting it awkwardly above her head. Still, he keeps his arm around her waist and she’s careful not to bump his leg. When she looks up into his face, she’s not shy or scared or ashamed. “It wasn’t like you and Lucy,” she says. “And even if it was, he’s dead. You weren’t. And that’s how shit’s gonna stay.”

There’s nothing he can say, not really. It’s done and even if he’d had a say, she’d have done the same thing. She doesn’t talk about it much, but just enough for him to know why.

He pulls her a little closer. “Let’s sleep for three days,” he says. He’s only half-joking.

Her answer’s muffled against his chest but he’s pretty sure she’s down with the plan because he can feel her grinning against him.

“Your grin can _not_ charm a deathclaw,” he says after a while.

She pulls back just enough that he can hear her this time. “Charmed myself a Robert MacCready though.”

Not like he can argue. “Yeah,” he says, pulling her to him once more. “Yeah, you did.”


End file.
